Snuff Movies

Are publishers the new record labels? Barely a week goes by without news reaching us of some new lavishly packaged re-releases, while there seems to be a spirit of innovation in book marketing that has been sadly lacking in the music business. Chuck “Fight Club” Palahniuk’s new book Snuff (out 20 May) is a case in point. Honest have been asked to direct three spoof porn movie trailers to help flog it, the first being The Wizard of Ass (above).

Are publishers the new record labels? Barely a week goes by without news reaching us of some new lavishly packaged re-releases, while there seems to be a spirit of innovation in book marketing that has been sadly lacking in the music business. Chuck “Fight Club” Palahniuk’s new book Snuff (out 20 May) is a case in point. Honest has been asked to direct three spoof porn movie trailers to help flog it, the first being The Wizard of Ass (above).

Snuff is, apparently, “about Cassie Wright, porn priestess, who intends to cap her legendary career by breaking the world record for serial fornication. On camera. With six hundred men. SNUFF unfolds from the perspectives of Mr. 72, Mr. 137, and Mr. 600, who await their turn on camera in a very crowded green room”.

Two more trailers are to come from Honest, which glory in the titles Chitty Chitty Gang Bang and the Twilight Bone.

Stag Scaffolding Sculpture by Ben Long at Oakmayne building site, Elephant Road, London SE17 1LB
Standing at a height of 35ft, in a dormant building site in south London, is artist Ben Long’s latest creation made entirely from conventional scaffolding components. Stag is part of an ongoing multi-disciplinary project, Great Travelling Art Exhibition, which also includes Long’s finger-drawings made in the dirt on the rear shutters of haulage trucks.

“The police post themselves at the School of Fine Arts – the Fine Arts’ students poster
the streets.” An anonymous poster from the Paris student uprisings of May 1968
40 years ago next month, the streets of the French capital saw workers and students protesting against the increasing levels of unemployment and poverty that were all too apparent under Charles de Gaulle’s conservative government. As a reminder of the power of self-initiated protest, May 68: Street Posters from the Paris Rebellion, launches this Thursday at the Hayward Project Space in London and brings together a range of handmade posters that were used to convey the protestors’ grievances during the uprisings. Before the show opens, we talked to the exhibition’s organiser and curator, Johan Kugelberg, about how this vibrant and uncompromising graphic art came about and what it means today…